Re: SATELLITE LIST

Bart De Pontieu (BDP@MPEPL)
Fri, 26 Apr 1996 11:06:55 +0100 (CET)

Jay Respler writes:

>Looking through back messages, I found this example of how the Satellite List 
>that I just posted can come in handy.
>
>>From: Bart De Pontieu <BDP@MPE.MPE-GARCHING.MPG.DE>
>>Subject: AMPTE decayed ? / Old elements
>>Resent-Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 19:28:06 +0100 (CET)
>>
>>A friend of mine is working on data obtained by the IRM-1 satellite, which
>>was part of the AMPTE-project. IRM-1 was built at our institute (MPE) and
>>she told me IRM-1 had burnt up in the atmosphere. 
>>I intend to ask one of the people here who was involved in the AMPTE-project 
>>whether it has decayed or not (as soon as the holidays are over), since I
>>think they should know for sure. 
>
> Has decay been confirmed?

Yes, it has. Here's a short extract from SeeSat-message 1648:

Mike McCants brought message 436 of SeeSat-L to my attention 
in which the late Joel Runes announces his discovery that Spacecom
had apparently 'updated' orbital elements of several (high) satellites
by just changing the epoch date from 1985 to 1995.

Mike found that the September 1993 issue of the SSR gives 113808 
as apogee (instead of 13808). They just dropped the 100000 digit...

Mike also ran his lunar/solar perturbation program which gives a negative 
perigee in late 1987. This agrees very well with the RAE-estimate (Nov 1987
as reported by Tristan) and the 'Winter 1987' which was mentioned by the 
source of my friend at MPE.


>This is all explained by the above reference to Note 3 in the listing:
>
>3    Lost.  Information over 1 year old.
>
>There were no changes during the year since the sat was lost and there were no
>new observations.  Each issue just repeated the last info available.
>That's something you have to be aware of when using SSR.

Ah, indeed, this makes your satellite list more useful than the regularly
issued SSR's, since the latter usually lack (at least to my knowledge) any
reference to whether the satellite is lost or not.

Cheers,
   Bart